The present invention generally relates to mobile communications and more specifically to techniques for mobile email confirmation services.
Advances in technology have allowed a user to communicate while being mobile. For example, access to email (private or corporate) while on the road may be provided using mobile devices. For example, messages may be received using email clients on mobile devices (via an Internet browser on the mobile device), via messaging, such as short message service (SMS) and multimedia message service (MMS), using email devices specifically configured for receiving emails (blackberry and goodlink devices), etc.
The applications that are used to read emails on the mobile devices are often less powerful versions of a user's email application found on a desktop computer. For example, the mobile device being used may offer far fewer features than those offered on the desktop computer. This may be because the computing power of a mobile device is not sufficient to support some of the functions or it is not feasible to include the functions on the mobile device. Accordingly, users have to access email without using these functions.
Some functions provided on the desktop computer are important and it may be critical that they are used. For example, certain virus-checking applications, privacy protection applications, etc. may be provided locally on the desktop computer. The applications can automatically provide the services to a user when the user is using the desktop applications. Because the applications are local, the emails are not sent before the service is invoked. This is advantageous because changes can be made before the email leaves the desktop computer. However, these applications may be too complicated to be included on a mobile device. This may be because of a lack of application programming interface (API) support, lack of memory, lack of computing power, etc. Thus, users may have to forego using the services and risk being infected by a virus or risk sending privacy information.